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This is one of the most disturbing things I couldn't stop reading.

by dsl 10y ago

petercooper 10y ago
Agreed. These creepy images make me wonder if some neural net-based text generator could optimize against algorithms detecting both readable English and scary/traumatic/intense/whatever prose.. and produce mental imagery darker than any human author has.
- lotyrin 10y ago
  It wouldn't maximize fear response in humans, only in the neural net that results from the training set. If we get to where we can simulate human neural nets (and identify the "scary" neurons) then we could perform gradient descent against those. That's an interesting concept. I don't know if that's been visited in SF, but it has potential. Imagine a set of not-so-random squiggles that causes uncontrollable fear to its beholder.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) might be of interest to you.
    - foota 10y ago
      Man, Snow Crash basically sounds like it stole that idea.
      - nitrogen 10y ago
        There was also an Outer Limits episode with a similar theme if I recall correctly. There is a lot of cross-pollination of ideas, and I think that's a good thing.
  - foota 10y ago
    Or a lethally funny joke
  - Fr0styMatt88 10y ago
    I believe this is actually a possibility now. So when I was back in high school I was playing around with one of the Kai art programs (I forget which one actually) that let you generate different patterns. I couldn't explain why but the patterns that were kind of regular-ish and curvy/abstract (anything that looked like cells under a microscope or those with a honeycomb-like structure) made me deeply, anxiously, almost panic-attack level uncomfortable. This startled me when it happened the first time. There was nothing at all I could logically connect it to. The best way I can describe it is that I get that deep stomach-fluttery feeling that comes with being really nervous and apprehensive, but without any of the emotional content of anxiety at all. I forgot about that experience for a long time, until the first Google 'Deep Dream' images were released. Turns out that the Internet has given this a name - trypophobia (fear of holes). The regular, not-quite-identifiable quality to the images is what seems to do it to me. Even now, my stomach is fluttering like I'm about to go on a scary roller coaster. Again though, this comes with no emotional panic. I'm not upset by it, it isn't self-reinforcing like anxiety is. It's just a really odd feeling. A very strong 'get away from this' feeling. I've read the hypothesis that this comes from an instinct to avoid danger, such as beehives and poisonous creatures and that makes a lot of sense (not totally sure from memory though so I might be getting it wrong; I need to find the study I'm thinking of). So I don't doubt that at least for some people it's possible to synthesize images that provoke a strong physiological response that could make them flee.
    - Sanddancer 10y ago
      Gut instinct wants to say that it's a bit of an uncanny valley experience as well. Our brains are wired to recognize patterns, and seeing something very organic, but also very mechanical just sets off those deep instinctual alarms that something's not quite right.
    - foxhop 10y ago
      I also have trypophobia. Sort of related: Instead of visually producing fear, you can also do it with sound. Research "Binaural beats: Gates of Hades" I literally threw my headphones off at like 25secs. I know you could literally mix trypophobia images and Gates of Hades to produce a waterboarding like response.
  - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    How many outputs need to get evaluated for scariness? Mechanical Turk might be a feasible black-box replacement.
- MojoJolo 10y ago
  For NSFW stories / erotica, there is Eros Errors (http://www.eroserrors.com/ http://www.eroserrors.com/). Generated using Karpathy's char-rnn.

This is one of the most disturbing things I couldn't stop reading.

by dsl 10y ago

This is one of the most disturbing things I couldn't stop reading.

Agreed. These creepy images make me wonder if some neural net-based text generator could optimize against algorithms detecting both readable English and scary/traumatic/intense/whatever prose.. and produce mental imagery darker than any human author has.

lotyrin 10y ago
It wouldn't maximize fear response in humans, only in the neural net that results from the training set. If we get to where we can simulate human neural nets (and identify the "scary" neurons) then we could perform gradient descent against those. That's an interesting concept. I don't know if that's been visited in SF, but it has potential. Imagine a set of not-so-random squiggles that causes uncontrollable fear to its beholder.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) might be of interest to you.
  - foota 10y ago
    Man, Snow Crash basically sounds like it stole that idea.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      There was also an Outer Limits episode with a similar theme if I recall correctly. There is a lot of cross-pollination of ideas, and I think that's a good thing.
- foota 10y ago
  Or a lethally funny joke
- Fr0styMatt88 10y ago
  I believe this is actually a possibility now. So when I was back in high school I was playing around with one of the Kai art programs (I forget which one actually) that let you generate different patterns. I couldn't explain why but the patterns that were kind of regular-ish and curvy/abstract (anything that looked like cells under a microscope or those with a honeycomb-like structure) made me deeply, anxiously, almost panic-attack level uncomfortable. This startled me when it happened the first time. There was nothing at all I could logically connect it to. The best way I can describe it is that I get that deep stomach-fluttery feeling that comes with being really nervous and apprehensive, but without any of the emotional content of anxiety at all. I forgot about that experience for a long time, until the first Google 'Deep Dream' images were released. Turns out that the Internet has given this a name - trypophobia (fear of holes). The regular, not-quite-identifiable quality to the images is what seems to do it to me. Even now, my stomach is fluttering like I'm about to go on a scary roller coaster. Again though, this comes with no emotional panic. I'm not upset by it, it isn't self-reinforcing like anxiety is. It's just a really odd feeling. A very strong 'get away from this' feeling. I've read the hypothesis that this comes from an instinct to avoid danger, such as beehives and poisonous creatures and that makes a lot of sense (not totally sure from memory though so I might be getting it wrong; I need to find the study I'm thinking of). So I don't doubt that at least for some people it's possible to synthesize images that provoke a strong physiological response that could make them flee.
  - Sanddancer 10y ago
    Gut instinct wants to say that it's a bit of an uncanny valley experience as well. Our brains are wired to recognize patterns, and seeing something very organic, but also very mechanical just sets off those deep instinctual alarms that something's not quite right.
  - foxhop 10y ago
    I also have trypophobia. Sort of related: Instead of visually producing fear, you can also do it with sound. Research "Binaural beats: Gates of Hades" I literally threw my headphones off at like 25secs. I know you could literally mix trypophobia images and Gates of Hades to produce a waterboarding like response.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  How many outputs need to get evaluated for scariness? Mechanical Turk might be a feasible black-box replacement.
MojoJolo 10y ago
For NSFW stories / erotica, there is Eros Errors (http://www.eroserrors.com/ http://www.eroserrors.com/). Generated using Karpathy's char-rnn.